Been a good couple of years

I remember 2 years ago trying out Lemmy and getting a few laughs about beans and trying not to poop. I thought "this is ok, but I don't think this will ever replace Reddit in my day to day."

But I stuck with it and have come to love and appreciate Lemmy. The number of users has continued to grow and I feel like there's enough content here now that I never feel bored. Plus I feel like even small posts and comments get attention and we're not just screaming into the void.

So happy cake day to all who did the same thing!

Same, cant believe it was 2 years ago. I was really bummed when it happened.i had been on reddit for almost 15 years at that point.
- Fucking same.
  I deleted my main account once they first came out with the reddit recap, and deleted my replacement when they fucked RIF, never to return.
  I still lurk without an account sometimes, but that's all they'll ever get out of me.
- I deleted my account before RIF died, as the writing was on the wall. I check Reddit accountless if there is a big news story, but tend to avoid it otherwise.
  Honestly I miss (the old) reddit sometimes, but Lemmy has been really enjoyable. My reddit account was getting old anyways, I'd already seen all the content that was reposted every year or so and was just getting annoyed. I absolutely do not miss the aggression of every reddit thread, I feel like we are generally all on the same team here.
  I guess that is kind of the downside of Lemmy too - if you're not a very specific type of person, it probably won't appeal to you. And I guess that can sort of result in an echo chamber, although it seems instead of arguing about the left and the right, we argue about the far left and the farther left.
Kind of same, I remember making a login like dropping my bags in an empty apartment like "well this is home now" and my neighbors are trekkies and Linux, as a fan of windows and star wars. Wondering if I could hack it here. Just said fuck it we ball and started posting to try and decorate the place, hoping to be part of the Lemmy that made a difference and gets us noticed among the turmoil.
Seems like we didnt quite make it compared to BlueSky as a reddit/Twitter supplanted, but thats ok, I think in retrospect I've made a fair number of people happy to see my posts, and hope I have at least helped a couple of (mostly) meme communities get either noticed or traction. (Sorry jojokes, I just ran out guys, I didnt want to dig into low effort to keep posting, people deserve some standard of quality)
RiF still lives on my phone, hoping one day I can use it again.
- my neighbors are trekkies and Linux, as a fan of windows and star wars
  Made this a couple weeks ago for you
- RiF still lives on my phone, hoping one day I can use it again.
  You can patch RIF to use your own API key, and with normal use you won't exceed Reddit's free tier API call limit. I used this guide to patch Relay for Reddit, but it has all the required info for RIF as well:
  https://github.com/KobeW50/ReVanced-Documentation/blob/main/Reddit-Client-ID-Guide.md
It's good enough, and that's really great!
Happy cake day!
trying not to poop
Why....were you trying not to poop? Or was this a meme I missed? I remember the beans.
Yeah, Lemmy had absolutely been great over the last year. 6-hour Top sorting is absolutely key here.
Is it a one-for-one replacement? No. There are a lot of communities that haven't been able to come over effectively. But the main core communities have and it's been fantastic.
- The post has been since deleted, but someone was trying to last three days without pooping.
  https://lemm.ee/post/61041432
To a t!! Happy Lemmy day you glorious nerds!!!
This is what early reddit was like honestly. I don't think lemmy will hit reddit's peak popularity but I don't think anyone wants any lemmy instance near that popular
Took the words out me mouth perfectly

Rif somehow shielded me from all the fuckery that was happening in Reddit, when I finally tried the mobile app and website from longer than 2 mins, I was like, oh yeah, ah, ok, bye

Lol same here. Jesus that whole site is atrocious now.
- They're thick in the "ads bring us more money than making improvements" phase of corporate bullshit now.
  Reddit still can't make a better app than the ones made by solo developers who just did it as a passion project, but they've got enough money to throw around for a Superbowl ad spot and an entire ad campaign on YouTube.
- It's so painful to look at anymore, lol.
Old reddit does the same thing on desktop but if that goes away I'll be fully done with it. As it is I am about an 80/20 split between lemmy and reddit now so it's probably going to happen regardless but that would speed things up.
- Ya, sadly there is still a lot of useful content in the technical subreddits. So I find myself ending up there via search engines on a fairly regular basis. But, I specifically use the Redirector plugin for Firefox to auto-magically force the use of old Reddit. If I hit the site on my work computer, I'm quickly reminded about why I quit the site.
- Oldlander on ff mobile. And same.
RIF was so cleannnn. Sync for Lemmy has been just as good. Tried some of the early ones like Jerboa but none of them replicated the vibe
- Currently using Thunder as a mobile lent client. Working out well so far.

I joined when Apollo went silent. Coincidentally, I'm wearing my Clipollo t-shirt as I type this.

Thats me once Reddit is fun stop working was the day I said goodbye to Reddit.
Ditto. I was an Alien Blue fan that jumped to Apollo then to Voyager once the APIs went down. I apparently have a type when it comes to Reddit and Lemmy apps.
- Same here. I had Alien Blue gold for the longest time too. Then Apollo saved the day and got so good. Reddit without it was useless ad garbage with a heavy slow UI. The fact it was so enshitified was the final nail in the coffin for me.
Me as well! Unfortunately, I joined an instance that went dark (kbin), so I’ve got 2 lemmy cake days, I guess.
- I also joined kbin when I started, then hopped to lemmy.world. Finally hopped to sh.itjust.works because I was tired of the world censorship like not allowing us to even browse !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- I went from Reddit to Kbin to StarTrek.Website and when every action was taking >1 minute and needing to be repeated, switched again to Discuss.Online, which I am very happy with and remain to this day.
  Except I also switched to PieFed.social and use that 95% of the time now.:-)
  It's been a bit of a wild ride! 🤣💪😺
Didn’t we have like months of warning before the API shutdown? I recall I was already upset about a ton of other shit over there (had been for years) and as soon as I started hearing rumors or stories about the API fuckery, I headed to Lemmy way before the apps stopped working.
- I was one of the foolish ones who hoped it wouldn't happen.

100% RIF was the best, when it went bye bye so did I

For a month or two I still kept the app on my phone. As a memento.
Reddit's official UX experiences suck balls
- I still have it installed and I plan to keep it until my smartphone stops working
- You just reminded me that I never uninstalled it lmao...
Same. I had gotten the paid version because the dev deserved something for such a great app. RIF died and I did a hard cutover to Lemmy. Deleted my Reddit account and probably caused some confusion for the cordcutters subreddit. I had a post which was part of the sidebar for about a decade.

Hey, thats me! 2 years already?!?! Freakin crazy

I know right?!

Piling on another comment to say that lurking here feels much nicer than on reddit. The comments are actually worth reading a lot of the time. RiF going down was a dark day, but Jerboa and Lemmy make everything light.

Because reddit is mostly bots and shills now. Lemmy will be up and coming soon and then it'll be even more astroturfed due to how easy it easy to do that on this platform.
Shutout to Thunder, another great client.

I feel noticed and my personal need for validation has been abated, thank you JBalls

Glad to be of assistance, homie

Wasn't RIF fir me, it was Apollo. But same general reason!

Some niche communities I miss (I know, I know. Make them! I'm a follower not a leader, and my schedule is bad enough already. I have substitutes). But overall Lemmy good.

I'm here for news and shitposts and random TILs.

Fuck Spez!

Yes Apollo!! I used it on my iPad, but boost was and now still is my go to. As soon as Boost was done, I jumped to Lemmy. I wasn't sure if I would stick around in the beginning, but I'm so glad that I have. I have thoroughly been enjoying my time here
Scrolled until I saw an Apollo post. I miss the old days on Reddit. As much as I want it to be the same here, it simply isn’t.

obligatory fuck spez and the corpos

Yes. I never used RIF. I'm simply concerned about who controls my media.

Came when RIF went down for good. Never looked back.

Personally, I did not come when RiF was dead. It was too sad...
- Ahh, the old Lemmy switcheroo.

Holy crap! I just got used to thinking that its been over a year since the blackout... but that shocking realization was a year ago now. Thanks, everyone!

Shit, it's been 2 years already? Damn. I still get bummed over RiF when I think about it.

It could have been a top Lemmy app if open sourced...

When reddit announced that they were going public I knew the end was nigh. Money corrupts everything. What made reddit cool was the users and reddit just wanted to suck that dry. I was happy to leave but I pretty much just lurked on Reddit so it wasn't that hard.

I loved RIF and was addicted to Reddit. But they dumped me and I am scorned and will never forgive reddit! Fuck reddit and I hope it dies.

Same same !

This is exactly when and why I stopped using Reddit permanently and switched to Lemmy. If you run out of "Active" content here, try switching to "Hot". And then "New"!

Or just go outside and touch grass. Running out of content means that you should do something else.
- What to do if I already touched all my grass
What comes after new?

Still miss RiF and what reddit used to be.

For much of reddit's best years, RiF was my top app.

Man two years, feels so much shorter

2000s were only 5 years ago
- And the nineties 15 years ago.

I'm so happy with Voyager being a really good replacement for Apollo. If you use it, donate to the dev. Building apps this good, solo, is hard.

Thank you for reminder!!

It's already been 2 years?? Damn

Cheers y'all.

Hopped over to Lemmy around that time and learned about the Fediverse. And now I'm checking out PieFed.

What a ride it's been.

Wait, it's been two years already?

It's been pretty good too. Thanks everyone for making this collection of sites fun and interesting! Fedi is awesome 😎

I was one of those RIF users that left two years ago and now I have to start over since lemm.ee is shutting down. Can anyone recommend a good instance?

I've been on sh.itjust.works for the last couple of years. The admins are cool as hell. Highly recommend.
- Seconded. It's pretty chill here.
- That was definitely one of the instances on my list to move to! Thanks for the recommendation!
sopuli and sh.itjust.works as others mentioned are good. I wanted to add a shout-out for discuss.online for anyone in the USA with fantastic uptime stats.
Also I'm a huge fan of PieFed, well worth checking out.:-)
- Piefed was on my list as well. I'll look into discuss.online, thanks for the suggestion!
- Just curious, why people avoid lemmy.ml i joined this beliveing its run by the lemmy devs so should be safest.
I moved to sopuli.xyz, which is also run from the Baltics (Finland).
- https://i.imgur.com/b2WLC2O.png

Oh man I'm still not over that. Such a stupid decision on Reddit's part.

Hey, at least it brought us here. And now that Lemm.ee is going away I'm doing this whole thing again.
- Yeah I'm so glad that many people felt strongly enough about it to populate this platform!
- I'm so sad about lemm.ee!!! That was the first instance I joined! That was my home for, wow, 2 years. But I'm still sticking with Lemmy. Just had to find myself a new home base.
- Not really: the Export+Import feature should make migration a breeze this time, and you'll still see all your old posts and stuff (you won't be able to edit them anymore though).
  Switching from centralized Reddit to decentralized Threadiverse will never need to happen again - I even switched away from Lemmy to PieFed (when the Import feature hadn't been implemented yet) and it was still much easier.:-)

It's been 2 years already?!

Exactly !!
Miss RIF so much.
- We should make our own RIF
- I still use RIF
  Revanced ftw. Although some things stopped working, /r/random stopped working

I still miss rif 😭

I still use rif. You can get the app as an apk, and patch it to replace the original API key with your own using something like vanced. I already had my key from before the debacle, not sure how you get one these days. Anyway, it did give me some trouble while logging in, but eventually it worked.
- This method stopped working for me 2 months ago. Something to do with headers (browser-agent), but didn't bother fixing

Reddit really turned into yet another brainrot doom scroll website.

I think back to what it used to be, how I used to engage with the communities and it's depressing to see how that was lost. I miss the old API especially. I used to have personal project around it that helped me use it. It was fun to develop and maintain, and it really helped me out browsing reddit.

when they changed the api ruled I tried still to use it, but their interface to create an account to use the free api (I was querying so little it would have applied to use the free api), never worked. I tried for months until finally giving up.

The first Place was a lot of fun. I miss that kind of stuff. Or the "wild sketch appeared" guy, or that guy who was a corvid specialist and popped up with bird facts every once in a while, until some drama happened and he left the site... It was an interesting site for a while there.
- Oh yes, there were so many of these novelty accounts.
  I remembered a user called Shitty Watercolor who would do very quick paintings of things user situations. There is still a subredit about it, and I'm shocked to noticed that the posts are from like 9 or 10 years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Shitty_Watercolour/
  There was also the jumper cables guy. Like, a user who would reply to every askreddit threat, only that his story would at some point include a line in which his father would get mad and beat him with jumper cables. Very funny.
  So many of these accounts. The site really used to have some community and lore to it, and I really don't feel it anymore. Even things like the secret question: "What time does the narwhal bacon?"

I genuinely can’t believe it’s been so long

Jerboa has served well as the replacement for me.

It's my spirit animal, I almost had to pick this one. :)
- Was looking up tracks in a field guide the other day and ran across this super cute rodent, The Mountain Beaver.

I never used RIF but I came over at the same time due to the fuckery over mods. I quit all my mod positions that day too, no more working for Reddit for free.

This me. Do we get snacks?

The office ordered everyone beans. You can have some during your break.

WHERE THE FUCK IS LEMMY IS FUN

Jebora mostly
- Yeah, I went straight from rif to jerboa. I tried the other early apps but they were all very "cardy"
- I use voyager closest to BaconReader

that was a fast 2yrs

Baconreader refugee here

I loved that app and I still miss it (and reddit) in some ways, but the API Apocalypse was when I decided I had to take a moral stand and quit. No way was I going to be railroaded into the first-party app full of ads and nonsense.
I haven't looked back since.
Ditto.

I got sitebanned a couple weeks before RIF officially died so not quite the same anniversary, close enough though :)

Never used RiF, but I left at the same time. The writing was on the wall.

Mods especially had a harder time with the official app, so a lot of us left in solidarity with them & the app devs. :-)

It makes me a bit upset that the developer of RIF didn't make a Lemmy alternative. They instead went to Tildes, which, when I tried to check it out was not open to public registration. IDK if that changed, but I have not even heard a single person ever mention it outside of those early days after the API changes were announced and people were looking for alternatives.

I want LIF. 😩

I'm on Tildes, and it's a good site for discussion without the constant memes and accusations of everyone being a communist / not communist / slightly communist / whatever else seems to get thrown around on Lemmy.
Not real sure why RIF dude chose that site to write an app for though. The site itself is basically exactly the same as the app. Very clean, very simple, no wasted space. It's even better than old.reddit at prioritising content over pretty pictures.
Lemmy would benefit much more from a RIF app, even if Voyager and the like do a pretty good job as it stands.
- and accusations of everyone being a communist / not communist / slightly communist / whatever else seems to get thrown around on Lemmy.
  So true lol
Oh ya what happened to that site? tap tap tap
Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha, and you must be invited to be able to register.
I assume all the elitists complaining about the eternal september (including the 20 years olds) have sequestered themselves there which is best for everyone.
- I complain about Eternal September and I'm still here, on the cooler platform with the cooler people... 🥺
There really is no comparison, Tildes has a few hundred to thousand active people (looks like about 20 posts a day... across the entire site), and is run by a single guy with very particular ideas about what people are allowed to say and do on his site.
Lemmy meanwhile has roughly 50k users and I would guess hundreds to thousands of posts per day, even if not millions like Reddit that allows more niches to develop.

I’ve only been here since the start of the year but I’m happy to be here.

For me it was Apollo

Apollo walked so Voyager could run

10 years on reddit but when they fucked over the Apollo dev I had no problem giving him a couple bucks for the app and moving to Lemmy, haven’t looked back.

didn't all 3rd party apps stop working

Comet for Reddit worked for much longer than most others. Had it on my mothers ipad and browsed reddit when i visited her.
RIF still works with some twaks, you need to patch it with an API key similar to youtube vanced and then it works. though some people report the method stopped working recently. Any way its a lost cause.

Boost was taken away for Reddit and swiftly given back to me for Lemmy. Bless the Boost devs and Lemmy hosts for saving me from the official Reddit experience 🤢

2 years and 2 weeks. I must have left a tad early.

I was sync for me, but hell yeah, it's been a good couple of years.

Sync FTW

It was great until the Dev abandoned it. It hasn't been updated in 15 months. 😡 😭
- Oh wow, I didn't even notice

Synch for Lemme and haven't gone back.

What's RIF? I joined when BaconReader stopped working

RIF was arguably the best Reddit mobile app.
Someone else suggested saying when all the 3rd party API supported apps stopped working - but there's only so much room on a meme text box, ya know?
RIF = reddit is fun
Its was when the third party apps went down

Hey that's me

Me too! Although I've mostly lurked this whole time until I finally made an acc this month
ditto, Hi!

Yep that's me. RIF was so good. Why would a website cannibalize itself like this?

$$$

I stopped using RIF when the dumbass who developed it started whining about open source and monetary remuneration. The app became popular in large part because it was open source.

It’s just like the nutsack who founded GitHub. A literal GPLv2 program and the guy got super rich and famous, then extolled the virtues of using lax permissive licenses. Absolute tool.

Sync was always better

3 months short for me but that's because it took me that long to figure out how Lemmy worked.

I wasn't on reddit, but I did hear a lot of buzz about lemmy around that time, so I decided to check it out. It's been one of the better places I've enjoyed for discussion.

I pour one out for Bacon Reader

Yup I loved baconreader!

In 10 days my account will be 2 years old.

I've enjoyed it, and this has been one of my most visited websites during that time. But I'm still not sure I'll stick around after lemm.ee shuts down at the end of this month.

Yeah, had to move back to this instance because of that. I think that just shows how hard it is and how much funding it actually requires.
- This made me curious, how much funding does it actually require for maintining reasonable amount of users in the long term ?
- My understanding is in the case of lemm.ee they were getting enough donations to cover the technical operating costs, but they did not have enough high-quality volunteers for admins (and presumably not enough money to pay admins. It would require a lot of money to pay fairly for that work).
Are you going back to big R?
- Well kind of yes and kind of no. I never closed my R account, and I still check there maybe once a week. So in that since "yes". But on the other hand, the quality of posts and discussion is pretty low. It feels like a lot of the content there is posted to meet some goal, such as selling a product or influencing opinions - rather than just sharing thoughts and ideas. I find that pretty off-putting. Despite the very high comment counts, genuine discussion there is almost non-existent. But the one bit of value I do sometimes get is it often has some piece of niche news that I'm mildly interested in.

I told reddit I wouldn't be back and I meant it. RIF was perfect and they didn't deserve the defeat and lies they received for just trying to share reddit to more people in a better manner. Fuck /u/spez

Me too, i even said it in one of my last comments and a couple months later when i logged back in to wipe over my account i saw i had a reply; someone responded saying something like "yeah sure thing, youll be back in 2 days drama queen".
Well, turns out i meant what i said. Bye Felicia

Apollo was the last straw for me.

That was me

Same. I used the little picture widget to cycle adorable animal pictures all day on my home screen. The one little thing that gave me joy, fucking ruined by corporations. While I don't have a widget anymore, I at least have someplace I can talk for 5 minutes and have someone listen.

Wow 2 years already?! Let's fucking go Lemmy!

Wow, it's been 2 years already? Time flies! Cheers to the leavers

Woohoo ! Happy Anniversary! Deleted manually 13 years of posts and comments.

I had a script that did it. Reddit kept restoring them and I kept running thr script, finally most of it stuck

I joined about half a year after the 3rd party apps died. Reddit's decision back then still feels like it was more recent than just 2 years ago, though...

Can time stop speedrunning itself, please?

And now my instance is shutting down 🤡

You decided on a new home yet? What's your selection criteria.
I'd be tempted to make a single user instance, given how there's an ansible playbook you can just run.

I replaced RIF with Stealth. It's actually a really excellent read-only client that you can subscribe to subs and view content without contributing anything to Reddit.

Reddit still publishes RSS feeds, so you can use an RSS reader to see the latest stuff. You can't interact with it, but who wants to trade shit posts with bots anyway?
This is how I keep up with my Sportsball teams since that community hasn't really taken off here yet.
- Lack of sports content is a bit of a rough spot for Lemmy. This is one of the few places where Linux memes get substantially more engagement than a super bowl thread.
  Side note, the superb owl community here is pretty great.
- I'm not a big fan of most RSS readers. And def not for Reddit content.

Cheers for infinity, may it rest in peace.

I'm currently using Eternity for lemmy (fork)

Speaking of which, a recent Android update (I know I should change OSes) got rid of the little Lemmy.world web app icon thing I had installed and I haven't been able to get it back, so far. Does anyone know how to fix that? That was working great as my RIF replacement. I read it all again and I'm such a grandma. :(

Wefwef?

Honestly Lemmy has been way better for me for my phone habits. Just enough content but not too much

Eventually, that's going to change.
- I dunno... every mainstream normie I've ever told about Lemmy gets enormously turned off by the tankie content here. Yeah you can block it, but why should they when Reddit caters to a more centrist audience, they seem to think. We are a Nazi bar here and that's going to be a problem for a long while.
  It didn't help that I did not realize that a Google search pulls up Lemmy.ml as the top instance, and that it shows only Local content by default to a guest user. Thus it substantially helps to point to a specific Lemmy instance rather than tell people to check out just "Lemmy", although lemm.ee was one of the top recommendations there so now that's going to be confusing when people read old posts and comments.

I patched my Sync and RIF so they still work fine. But I'm here anyway!

Oh, it went down finally? I wonder if whatever Eternity is based on died

BaconReader for me.

Sync for me
- I used to love that app.
- Sync has been very user friendly for me, and the closest I felt to RiF

I mean... Lemmy has always kinda felt more sane

I joined when Reddit started milking their users

Did anyone leave because they were banned? Because that was me.

We're two years out from the API apocalypse. I think. That's how I got here.

Congrats Lemmy. Way better than Reddit shit show.

Two year anniversary just a few days ago. Also left when RiF stopped working. Really nice to see Lemmy activity continually going up with each passing day, but the quality hasn’t gone down. Very much enjoying it!